pittplayer said:

That's not the herald ;') the herald is the guy on the dragon (i.e. the wraith that comes out of the first portal).

::Sigh:: I'm sorry that the herald disappointed you (and not just because I put alot of time into it). What do you mean by concentrated theme? I thought the various effects worked well together. You don't like how you carry around unkillable monsters :') particularly undead undead monsters (pretty much the only way to get rid of one of those is to kill it then evade it after it reanimates). Perhaps I should also make it so undead undeads don't effect the monster limit?

did u see my glaaki herald? i want undead zombies and ghouls not undead shoggoths and gugs and star vampires!! u know what i mean? an undead herald should feel creepy, u know?

pittplayer said:

Heh... Yeah, I remember your idea. Although personally, I think the idea of an undead shoggoths, gugs, and star vampires is pretty cool ;') then again, I liked Marvel Zombies (i.e. I don't care what it is that's undead, as long as it's undead I love it). Use your imagination :') picture some half decaying Cthonians.

mythos night/zombie night should fit different moods.

pittplayer said:

Every night is zombie night :')

Dude undead bunny rabbits would be awesome! For easter they would eat chocolate humans...

Hm... some sort of zombie invasion herald maybe... makes all monsters count as zombies, and just floods the board with them.

It could be more tedious than fun, though. It deserves playtesting.

Graksnor said:

I had an idea like this a while ago...a herald which turns all monsters into zombies, or spawns excessive zombies, and they just swarm everywhere until you do something which stops the incursion. It'd be one of those heralds that you can "kill", like the Dweller in the Gulf / Worm That Gnaws which I posted here a while ago. So there's a sort of 'zombie invasion' stage of the game and once you get rid of it, you can get on with actually winning.

On the other hand...it may be another case of "Let's turn AH into a different game!". There are already quite a few zombie-themed board games after all...

Lich King is very cool. The day/night mechanic that changes the overall difficulty in many ways is a neat idea that would have a huge effect on the feel of the game from turn to turn. Nice job! That said, here are a few suggestions to throw around:

I don't know if adding 4 toughness to undead monsters is necessary. That's pretty extreme.

Rain of Maggots is a cool mechanic, but doesn't fit the name at all.

I assume Defend the Master refers to each round in the Final Battle, but it doesn't say so. Maybe put that on there.

You may want to reduce the number of turns between night/day changes. 3 turns is a lot of time. And on that note, it actually works so that night stays forever unless a day environment happens to be drawn. This may never actually happen, and often will happen only after many turns. The game is likely to be night most if not all of the time. The day/night mechanic might be better if it always switched every three turns.

Lastly, the picture is a cool one but it's way too fantasy/D&D for Arkham. There has to be a picture of undead that would better fit the mythos feel. That pic just seems goofy in a Lovecraft universe.

yeah i think the day/night thing is a good idea that needs to be worked on. maybe make it night when a environment mythos card is in play and day when a mystic or rumor card is in play? i dont know i will think about it. i think it has potential

Sothis said:

Heh... Okay.... Apparently I will make one lengthy response ;') but first, thanks for commenting on the herald (I'd worked on it for several hours and was sad that no one seemed to like it— besides me).

::Cough cough:: actually that was a D&D photo ::cough cough:: I spent quite a bit of time searching for a picture of an undead army and that was the most interesting one I could find. Perhaps if I took a jpeg copy onto a computer lab computer and spent a little time... Um... Enhancing ::evil grin:: on photoshop. Yes. I do believe I shall. I'll be back on campus next week.

Regarding the name "rain of maggots," hey, they're heat seeking maggot spies that fall from the skies ;') what could make more sense than that? Um... Yeah... I wanted to do something cool to go with pittplayer's joy in maggot rain. That's what I came up with ::shrug:: I also need to change that text to "Each investigator" (I just noticed it).

Re: day and night. I wanted the game to mostly be during the night (primarily for mood reasons). The "day" mechanic is to provide an occasional power burst (it's essentially intended as a bonus round for a killing spree, if you get lucky enough to draw one). Keep in mind, at day, first all the undead's night bonuses drop off, and then you also get additional bonuses for fighting them during the day.

I also liked the idea of the town having its sigh of relief when the seemingly endless night ends ;') only to scream in terror when when realize that it was only a brief break in the seige of shadow (raise the terror level by one!) If day switched to night every three turns, the terror track would be going crazy ;') plus combat would be way too easy as all immunities would be down, and all resistances dropped (which isn't to say that another time dynamic couldn't be designed, but not with these effects— it just wouldn't work).

Oh geeze... You're completely right about Defend the Master (that and Rain of Maggots were both tacked on in the last fifteen minutes and I didn't proofread them properly).

Lastly, +4 to base stats undead (i.e. vampire, ghost, wraith, mummy, skeleton, zombie)... Heh :') I wanted to have this herald give the undead a special amplification (and I thought that plus four would make even a weak zombie a force to be reckoned with— as it is now a five toughness physically resistant monster, that can't be traded if killed (thematically the base stat undead are prone to reanimation, their bodies are no longer exchange worthy materials as even disassembled, they will reassemble and kill). Pretty much the only way to get an undead monster off the board is to kill it then evade it successfully when it reanimates (then it returns to the cup). Also, just in case you didn't catch this :') it's implied in the card that the Wraith is The Lich King on his undead dragon (hence the flying monster from Hell entering the game at the very start). Seriously... It's a seven toughness physically immune magically resistant monster that returns from the grave even if you somehow manage to kill it ;'D the idea behind it was making spending time in the streets like playing Russian Roulette (of course, you actually have a bit better odds than you would in Russian Roulette since you can theoretically sneak away from it even if it flies down on you— it has awareness +0 and all investigators are going to have +1 sneak (because the vast majority of the game will be at "night"). Anyways, I wouldn't worry about the +4 toughness bonus. Only the vampire, and ghosts, have a decent chance of catching you if you boost your sneak during upkeep. ::Sigh:: anyways, I wanted to demonstrate that the traditional undead were significantly amped up with this herald, not just to be unbearably brutal (and I really don't think I am since the odds of drawing a difficult to evade undead undead monster are fairly slim. ;') I was thinking about making them count as spawn monsters also, but it seemed a bit too cruel (and the herald is already fairly difficult).

The funny thing about this herald is actually even though it has loads of text, its fairly easy to follow (once you understand it), because you'll probably only need to pay attention to Undead Army, The Dead Walk in Darkness, and Rain of Maggots. A third of the text is there just to define how the day and night mechanic works.

Hrm... What if Rain of Maggots were changed into Rain of Maggot Metamorphosis?

::Shrug:: anyways, here's an idea for what you could do with environment cards. You could have two preselected environment cards (force a drawing of the second one of whatever turn you want them to alternate), and you could either ban other environments from entering play, or you could allow two environments simultaneously (however this might lead to some bizzare weather phenomena, such as Sunny and Clear and Raining Cats and Dogs ;'D or something like that— I suggest you get out all the environment cards and figure out some sort of organizational pattern for them before planning what to make). If you had some sort of strange weather paradox I would make it have sanity loss effects or perhaps something nastier ;'D

::Shrug:: anyways, that's not the design of this herald, if you guys want to make something else that uses weather effects :') be my guest, I'll be happy to comment and throw some ideas around after I see it, but I'm kindof exhausted right now (I made several creations in the last few weeks— all of which took me quite a long time to think up). I'm not sure if I'll be posting anything else for a while (I'll be going on vacation during the summer and will be back around August 1st, after which I'll be spending alot of time trying to master Innsmouth), but hey, if I get some good idea before then or while I'm away, I'll make it into something. I'm kindof happy to just tinker on what I've recently posted :') I mean, hey, I haven't even tried playing them yet!

Heh... I was reading in the main forum and got a herald idea, well, a basic effect to work the other stuff around anyways. Flipped over gates. Perhaps gate colors could also have effects four colors have a certain effect, gates with red or blue have a fight or will check to prevent stamina or sanity loss each turn spent there. Not sure what green or yellow might go with. ::Shrug:: might also want to play around with sealing difficulties and gate modifiers. It could make a fairly nasty and disruptive herald if done properly. I'm not really sure what form I'd want to give it though. Suggestions anyone?

I guess I'll be making another creation before I go to Europe after all ;')

Ideally, it would be nice if the herald had something to do with mysteriousness?

Ooo! Green gates could work like optional gate boxes (with a successful lore check after exiting— otherwise it's too easy to avoid difficult gates, with a failure leading to the first level of R'lyeh).

Um... Yellow? Increases difficulty of sealing a gate by one?

Heh... The Abyss, Yuggoth, and R'lyeh would all be pretty painful as a result.

Perhaps the four location places could work like a three effect randomizer of some sort? 1-2: effect one 3-4: effect two 5-6: effect three, or perhaps just two effects, or two effects and a null effect (a positive negative and neutral). Suggestions anyone? I'm going to sleep now ;')

So much for no more heralds till August ;'D

Don't let the text intimidate you, it's actually much less to keep in your head than the quantity of text would indicate. The bulk of it is taken up by describing a randomizer effect.

Direct Link:

http://i622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/Kerathimel.jpg

That's really neat - a Herald that fiddles with gates depending on where they go, and sometimes (rarely) it doesn't suck. Nifty. And it has a cool picture. Must play with now...

Hadanelith said:

;'D glad you liked.

Seems over kill to give Yog a gate bonus with this guy... loss 2 sanity and then be devoured! lol hmmm... this guy may make Yog really really hard!

Enter OW and be devoured... AO awakens be Devoured = you loss! ha ha

MrsGamura said:

Heh... Playing Yog against this one should be *very* difficult (especially since his gate difficulty would stack with the yellow gate difficulty) and there's a decent extra chance of delays and damage (leading to random devourings with well equipped characters). I'm not advising that you *should* do it :'D but if you're in the mood for a challenge ::evil grin::

hey does any one remember those custom heralds for one player games? from the old forums. do you guys have any?

Here is a Herald I've been working on. It comes with some Monsters too!

I'll talk more about the Horsemen in the custom monsters section. I have checked them via the skill chart in Strange Eons to give them a reasonable chance to be defeated... hee hee hee!

::Laughter:: and they said *my* stufff was tough ;')

With these guys screw sealing victory... everyone to the Bank... then the shop. Shop until the world blows up!

Maybe they should do other things... effect rifts, Dunwich track, deep one rising track, etc

MrsGamura said:

Agreed. With these things in the cup I wouldn't even bother trying to go for a sealing victory— their effect is too strong and they swarm too fast (perhaps if you made their abilities trigger on lower rolls, i.e. one out of six or two out of six (with the herald *maybe*), max.

Seriously, take the Horseman of Death for instance. Even if you can manage to get to it before it triggers and brings out another horseman, it's stats are ridiculous. *4* toughness double immunity monster? Color is a two toughness monster and it's a pain in the ass. Even if you have a blessed investigator with fight six, odds are you'll get that investigator devoured when you attack the horseman. You would need fight seven just to have a 50/50 chance *while blessed*. Unlikely :'/

P.S. I hope you asked Bosch permission to use his image ;'D

Here we go, Take 2. I made them a little bit easier to fight; Death is now phys resist instead of immune, though he does have a -2 mod. Also, pestilence should be easier to take down now, and Famine. War is still hard, but a magic user or a fighter with a magic weapon should be able to do it. This may not be the final incarnation, but I hope we're getting there. I'm going to try to talk my group into playtesting them this week... *evil laugh* Thanks for all the input!

PS, the borders were done by exporting in .png format and then using a paintbucket gradient tool in an image editing program. I thought this would help with the movement and; while it's different, the precedent has been set with a couple of the gate cards, I think from Dark Pharoh.

I personally still think the Horsemen are too hard. I would reduce their toughness to 3, as 4 is almost impossible to defeat without a combat-oriented Investigator with a strong weapon. Also, consider that this is only a herald; playing it together with Shub-Niggurath will mean a ridiculous five toughness.

Getting rid of them through gates is almost impossible as they activate too often and therefore accumulate too fast. Also, you don't always get the right gates to get rid of every monster.

The Horseman of Death is also a problem as he is flying. If he triggers when in the Sky, he will drop one of the other Horsemen there where you can't reach it.

Btw, i like what you did with the borders. They should have done that with the Werewolf.